Interlude I – Stone and Seeds
POV: Seren
The marshes had changed.
Where once there had been only bog and peat and the lazy trickle of black water through tangled reeds, now there was order. Elevated canals cut the wetland like veins, bound in timber and stone. Wooden sluices opened and closed at set hours, releasing the water in measured flow, feeding the vast fields below, square, tiered paddies of rice and barley, their green shoots swaying with the breeze. Oxen turned slow, sweat-dark under the sun, drawing water up from the trenches with creaking wheels. Beyond, men in wide straw hats spread seed, and behind them came barefoot boys singing work songs as they chased the birds away with sticks.
Seren stood atop a narrow wooden platform, arms crossed, watching the valley unfold like a living map. From here he could see the bone-white thatch of the grain barns, the black-and-red banners flying over the estate at Greenhollow, and the cranes by the riverbank lifting timber and stone with groaning pulleys. The sun was warm. The earth was warmer. Somewhere in the stillness, a frog croaked.
He had helped build this.
Not in a year, nor two, but in five, five long years since he'd stood before Jon Stark in the Great Hall of Winterfell, expecting to be sent home for arrogance. He still remembered the way the snow clung to his boots then, and the way the firelight caught in the purple of Jon's eyes. Seren had seen what mattered even then.
"You turned fish into gold," Jon had said, unrolling the parchment. "Fourfold increase. You restructured the dockside, redirected the inlet tide with nothing but driftwood and scrap, and paid your laborers with half the catch. No blood. No theft. No lord's favor. You did that on your own."
"I was hungry," Seren had said. "So were they."
That had been enough.
Now he watched thousands of acres of tamed wetland below him, where families worked with pride and no one begged for crusts. The scent of warm mud and growing things filled the air. This land was stubborn, but it had bent to steel and vision.
The North will never starve again, he thought, and his chest tightened.
The work had not been easy, for five years this place has expanded, and trouble came with it. The Neck was no gentle plain, it fought back. The soil was half-water, half-root, and sank underfoot like a dying beast. The first canals they dug collapsed within weeks, the banks swallowed by the mire. Sluice gates warped in the heat and split in the frost. Insects bred in the stagnant pools faster than the fish did, and the first snowfall nearly destroyed everything. But Seren had grown up in saltmarsh and tideflow. He knew the way of drowned land.
He began with basket weirs and willow bundling, ancient tricks of the crannogmen. Where timber sagged, he used stone ballast from collapsed ruins nearby and the new concrete Jon had invented, more and more concrete. Where carts failed, he laid plank roads and wide-footed sledges. At night, he sketched by torchlight, testing layouts for tiered dikes and flood-retention basins. During the day, he worked with his hands alongside Northmen, the freedmen and farmers Jon had sent to him, southerners and smallfolk, a few former wildlings, and even one maester disgraced for tinkering with pumps too much.
One night, Jon sat with Seren in the granary loft, eating boiled barley and eel. He listened as Seren explained the trouble with the channel gradient, how the high tide pushed back the water intake, how iron pumps rusted in the marsh air.
Jon had stared out over the darkened fields for a long time. "What if we built elevated catchment pools?" he asked finally. "Stacked reservoirs above the paddies, not beside them. Feed them through the slope, let gravity do the work."
Seren had blinked. "That's… not how we've done it."
"Good," Jon had said. "Then it might actually work."
It had.
Now, a series of terraced cisterns climbed the hill to the west, fed by diverted springs dammed with stone and reinforced with concrete. They trapped the rainfall and held the upland runoff long after storms passed. At dawn, sluices released the water downhill in measured steps, enough to flood the paddies when needed, then drain just as quickly into the next row. Crops once unthinkable in the North now grew in stubborn abundance, wild rice, green wheat, even yellow melons along the sunnier ridges. Tens of thousands of men toiled the land and tamed the northernmost marshes. Enough food for millions of men, women and children, enough to feed the North.
It wasn't just food. With Jon's approval, Seren had begun testing hemp retting and reed-plaster for brickwork. A dyehouse stood beside the main canal now, extracting pigments from swamp blossoms. And in a nearby village, Jon had ordered the construction of a "learning lodge"—not a maester's tower, but a place where orphan boys and farmer's sons could learn counting, irrigation, land-mapping, and letters.
There were failures, of course. The second dam burst during a thaw and flooded three rice villages. A fungus wiped out half the barley crop one humid day. And more than once, lords from the old families sent riders to remind Seren that this was northern land and not his to tame like some reachman dandy. Thank the gods this is Jons land now.
Now, standing above the valley of green, water, rising timber, stone, and seemingly infinite farmlands, Seren understood what Jon had meant. The Neck had not died. It had only slept, waiting for men who saw not just what was, but what could be.
And in the distance, cranes creaked skyward, lifting stone to heights the marsh had never known.
He turned as hooves approached along the plank road. A black-cloaked rider from Castle Black, carrying a scroll sealed in wax. Another summons, perhaps. Or a warning. Either way, the work would continue. There was too much worth saving now.
The Neck narrowed as he rode north, the swamp giving way to firmer earth and shallow rises of stone. The sky hung heavy with mist, turning the world gray at the edges, but the black causeway was solid beneath his horse's hooves. For centuries, the kings of the south had broken their armies here, where the land itself fought alongside the North. And now, for the first time in generations, the Moat was waking.
Moat Cailin loomed ahead like a half-buried giant stirring from sleep. What remained of its towers jutted like broken teeth from the earth, dark basalt and green-veined stone worn smooth by time and war. Yet where once the ruin had brooded in decay, now it pulsed with motion and purpose. Seren slowed his mount and took in the sight from the hillock.
Great cranes, powered by windlass and oxen, swung timber scaffolds into place along the southern wall. Stonecutters from White Harbor and masons from the hills of Last Hearth labored side by side with freedmen and crannogmen. Gigantic blocks, many untouched since the Age of Heroes, were being levered back into alignment, re-seated with concrete and reinforced with iron braces forged in Winterfell's own forges. Sparks flew from the courtyards where rivets were driven into iron doors thicker than a grown man's chest.
The old causeway, once broken and overgrown, had been cleared and widened. A new road of timber, gravel, and sun-dried brick stretched southward, wide enough for two carts abreast, with room for mounted outriders. Supply wagons rolled slowly through the mist, laden with grain, nails, rope, quarried stone, and, more rarely, barrels of pitch. The bottleneck was almost gone. Soon, the spine of the North would be open again, from the Gift to Greywater to the Kingsroad.
One day, Seren thought, this place would be more than a ruin reborn. It would be a fortress unlike any in Westeros.
He could see it already, rising in his mind's eye like a dream half-remembered. Twenty massive towers, each shaped by necessity and age, rounded, squat, wide at the base and flared at the crown like the ancient watch-trees of the Neck. Rebuilt in stone and Northern concrete, with walls as thick as small houses, resistant to fire, time, and siege. Their faces would bear no ornament, only the crude dignity of Northern craftsmanship. Every angle calculated, every inch layered in function.
A vast curtain wall would span the marsh on either side, anchored by stone pylons sunk into the bedrock and tied together with iron. A keep, broad, low, and cold, would rise from the heart of the Moat like a sleeping beast, its windows narrow, its parapets wide enough for war engines and shield-walls. Below it: cisterns, armories, granaries, deep vaults and command halls carved into the ancient stone. It would be a bastion of the North—not just a shield, but a hammer.
Running water with Jons new systems were being set up, and massive vaults were being built under the keeps. Gates of black steel would replace the rotted timbers, hung on dragonbone hinges. Portcullises would drop with a thunderclap. Murder-holes and arrow slits would line the entry passages like the teeth of a beast. Ranged along the battlements: scorpions, ballistae, racks of tar, and barrels of dragonglass. When the wind blew, it would carry the scent of oil and stone dust, not swamp rot.
And below all of it, the causeway would run like a black ribbon through the reeds, straight and dry, reinforced with stone pilings, patrolled from dusk to dawn. A lifeline. A warning.
But it would take time.
Even after five years of toil, sweat, and blood, Seren knew they were only halfway there. The stones still rose crooked in many places. The marsh still tried to swallow the foundations. Every cartload of mortar, every bar of steel, every trained mason, they all came slowly. Winters stole weeks. Floods took more.
And yet, it would stand. One day, it would stand tall. It was already an impressive castle and more defensible than most in Westeros.
When the world looked north and asked, where is the strength of House Stark?—they would look here.
And find their answer.
At the gatehouse, Seren dismounted and was met by a broad-shouldered man in a rust-colored cloak. Ser Cort, once a hedge knight of little repute, now wore a black breastplate adorned with a white direwolf badge. His beard was salt-and-pepper, but his eyes were sharp.
"Inspection, is it?" Cort said, smirking. "You missed the rain. We had three feet of it last week. Flooded half the lower yard."
"I'd rather miss the rain and not the rot," Seren said, shaking his hand. "Let's walk."
They toured the perimeter as masons hoisted new murder holes into the wall's belly-angled so boiling oil or scalding pitch could be poured without exposing the defenders. At the towers, newly constructed horn-platforms rose above the tree line, linked by signal flags and mirrored lights for clear-sky communication. Cort gestured to one.
Cort's jaw tensed. "This time, it won't take a thousand crannog arrows to hold the pass. We've got steel now. Cauldrons. Ramparts wide enough for artillery carts."
Seren nodded, gaze sweeping the causeway where carts moved in double file. "And food, roads."
He glanced back at the Moat itself, its towers rising like a crown of jagged stone, half-finished, half-forgotten. But stronger now. Solid. Awake.
"Jon once told me this place was the keystone in the arch of the North," Seren said softly. "Whoever holds it can break armies, or let them pass."
Cort grunted. "He's right. This isn't just a choke point. It's a blade held to the South's throat. And now we've sharpened it."
As they stood in the shadow of the gatehouse, the wind picked up, carrying the scent of stone dust, pitch, and old salt. From the horn tower, a call echoed, long, low, steady. A test, only a drill. But it carried like a warning through the mists, across the Neck.
Seren didn't smile. But he felt something settle deep in his chest. Pride.
The crannogman was older than the marsh, or so it seemed. His face was carved by a thousand seasons, lined and knotted, brown as bark. He stood barefoot in the mud, a frog spear slung over one shoulder and a bone necklace tapping against his chest. They called him Harlan Reed, uncle to Lord Howland. A ghost of the old ways.
"I should have stayed in Greywater," he muttered as Seren dismounted, boots sinking into the spongy earth.
"You would've, if it hadn't started flooding," Seren said, offering no false sympathy.
Harlan gave him a sharp look. " It's the trees and the water and the spirits who live between. They rise when the land is troubled. And it is troubled, steward."
Seren didn't smile. "The trouble is that your people are starving. These new fields, the dikes, the rice paddies, they work. But we need hands to tend them. Your knowledge. Your wisdom. You've seen the difference it makes."
Harlan squinted past him, where children knelt in neat rows of flooded furrows, planting grains with their toes. "Aye. They'll eat. And forget the old songs."
"No," Seren said, voice firm. "They'll live. That's the beginning of remembering. Not the end of it."
Harlan shifted his spear. "You came from stone halls and banners. What makes you think the Neck can change without breaking?"
Seren looked around. At the sluices guiding water through the carved wooden gates. At the wind-cranes lifting bushels onto barges. At the tiny shrines at the edge of every paddy, where frogs and reeds were offered in thanks. "Because it already has, look at this, Lord Reed." Seren motioned to the farms and canals as far as the eye could see. "The old spirits will walk these lands still—but so will your grandchildren. And they'll have rice, and roofs, and roads."
The old man grunted. "You talk like a lord."
"I serve one," Seren said. "And he remembers every soul, living and dead. The North is rising, my lord. We need the Neck to rise with it."
Silence followed, long as the mist. Then the old crannogman nodded. "Fine. I'll teach. But the bogs keep their secrets. If the trees start whispering... don't say I didn't warn you."
Even the men clinging to the old world are coming to our side Jon… If you could see this you would weep.
Seren found them in the long barrack hall beside the south wall, the offices were this would be done in the future were almost done, but not yet. A map was spread across the table, thick parchment painted with new roads, tower sites, port icons and red flags marking granary zones. Arren was there already, his hands ink-stained, glasses perched low on his nose. Ser Cort, armored in a padded vest and oiled leathers, stood like a stone beside him.
"Good," said Arren, without looking up. "You're late."
"I was convincing a bog ghost to share his secrets," Seren said. "How's the census?"
Arren cleared his throat. "One hundred and ninety-eight thousand, six hundred and eleven souls, as of last moon. Concentrated along the moat, the coasts banks, and the new Neck settlements. That includes children."
"That's a forty-three percent rise in just a year," Cort said. "We're going to need more walls."
"We're going to need more of everything," Seren muttered, scanning the map. "Let's talk roads."
Arren tapped a dotted line stretching from Moat Cailin to White Harbor. "The King's Road bypass is already halfway paved. Stone footings, timber bridges, ironwood mile markers. Once the Neck road meets it, trade from both coasts can funnel straight to Winterfell."
The road network, once little more than muddy tracks and half-forgotten game trails, had begun to take shape like the veins of a living thing. Wide, hard-packed roads of gravel and concrete ran from Moat Cailin to the western and eastern shores, linking the riverine hamlets with the hill settlements. Surveyors marked out future stretches in charcoal and chalk, cutting through dense thickets and ancient groves with careful precision. Watchtowers were rising every ten miles, simple stone affairs with signal horns and rain-catch cisterns, each one a torch against the wilds. It wasn't just movement the roads enabled; it was safety, trade, vision. For the first time in living memory, the southern marches of the North would be more than forgotten hinterlands, they would be connected.
"And the villages?" Seren asked.
"Twenty-two new ones settled," Arren replied. "Mostly freedmen, smallfolk from the Reach and Westerlands, even some Valemen, and of course a lot of Northmen. The incentives worked, five acres, tax-free for a year, one goat per head. They're building with thatch and sod, but we've sent teams to reinforce with timber and stone."
North and south of the Fever River, new villages were rising on dry ridges and terraced banks. Some were no more than clusters of thatched homes and half-dug root cellars, others boasted timber halls and communal grain pits. Former poachers, debtors, and even a few southern refugees had taken Jon's offer of land and safety, clearing brush, planting seed, raising walls. There were arguments, scuffles, failures. But every week another homestead staked a claim, another longhouse was framed in pine and ash. Even the crannogmen, ever wary of stone and change, had begun to edge outward, their boat-homes tied alongside new piers of timber and rope. The Neck, it seemed, was breathing for the first time in a hundred years.
Where once there was nothing but moss and sedge, fields now rippled with hardy grains and green rice. Northern barley, low-sun flax, and black beans had taken root alongside the watery paddies, their rows meticulous and foreign. Cattle grazed in controlled pastures beyond the marshlines, and smoke from new kilns curled into the sky. At the edge of every settlement, there were signs of something more, brickyards, soap vats, tanners, and even a crude paper mill near the eastern reaches, where cottonwood pulp ran white in the creek. Trade had begun flowing before the towns were finished, bartering saltfish for nails, oil for seed, labor for lumber. It was messy, organic, and promising.
"Any unrest?"
"A few raids near the marshlands south. Brigands. Ser Cort's riders handled it."
"Handled it," Cort repeated flatly. "No mercy for raiders. The coasts are to be safe. And we're placing watchtowers, every ten miles, on stone footings. Two stories, with horn bells and fire cages. We'll see a threat before it sees us. We are training more and more men. Two thousand five hundred standing men under arms, as of last count. Half of them trained to what I'd call proper northern standard—shield walls, halberd drills, small unit cohesion. The rest are still green, but they've stopped pointing the sharp end at themselves, so that's something. We are eating coin, though."
"We make coin faster than we can use it lately, the northern fire trade is expanding faster than expected," Arren Said.
""Whiskey"" Cort and Seren corrected on instinct.
Seren nodded. "The new ports?"
Arren smiled. "Saltstream, on the western shore near the mouth of the Fever River, deep enough for deep-draft ships, dock already half-raised. And Driftway on the eastern shore to The Bite, for traffic from the White Harbor and the narrow sea near the Bear's Neck. Timber, rice, peat, smoked fish, exports increasing by twenty percent each quarter."
"How is the bureaucracy I have been setting up doing?" Seren asked.
Arren sighed. "Growing. Slowly. Too slowly. We've set up regional wardens, three per sector, with scribes trained in tallies and grain-chits. The problem is literacy."
Taxes were the battlefield. Under Jon's guidance, they were overhauled to be not only just but visible. Levies were collected twice yearly by appointed grain-factors and escorted by sworn guards. Most paid in coins, but wheat, smoked fish, charcoal, or labor days were accepted. Hoarding was outlawed. False measures were punishable by loss of charter. Yet no man paid in blood unless he broke faith or law. The aim was not punishment but permanence: to anchor each man to the land he worked, to his neighbors, to a realm that would not vanish at the first frost or the next war.
To manage all this, Jon had insisted on a structure that could survive him. "A kingdom without ledgers is a grave with a banner," he'd said. Seren had helped draft the reforms that created the Warden Councils, groups of literate men and women assigned to clusters of villages, trained in law, numbers, and logistics. Most were commoners elevated by skill, not blood. Each Warden reported monthly to Moat Cailin and quarterly to Winterfell. Slowly, the land began to speak through ink and seal, not just sword and horn.
In time, the settlements began to form a rhythm. Villages grew along the new roads, their houses raised in orderly rows with shared wells, smokehouses, and grainyards. Young men who might have taken up swords for a dead cause now turned them into plows. Refugees from southern lands found peace in the Neck. The crannogmen, once elusive and secretive, began to trade frogskins and healing moss in the open markets. New smithies rose, fed by forges from Winterfell. Glassblowers, carpenters, midwives, even singers, all found place in the growing tapestry of land and law.
It wasn't perfect. Banditry still flared where the law was thin, and some old families resented seeing bastards in coats of office. But the land was changing. Rooting. And with every beam raised, every stone laid, every oath sworn and kept—Seren believed it could last.
"Then we teach," Seren said. "Or we bring in lowborns from Oldtown who can read. The new schools being set up will help in time. What about the taxes?"
"Tiered, like Jon wanted," Arren answered. "Ten percent from landowners, five percent from smallfolk, none from the first year of settlement. All in grain, labor, or coin. The new law is harsh on hoarders and tax dodgers, but fair. And we've already tripled reserve stores."
"Good," Seren murmured. "We'll need it come winter."
"And the forges?" Ser Cort asked.
Seren allowed himself a brief smile. "The new smithies at Saltstream and Moat Cailin are operational, the steel converters are working. Steel output is steady. We're arming the towers with steel-tipped bolts. We'll be casting a chain for the Fever River soon. And I have men trying to reproduce Myrish swivel scorpions for the western shore, we can never be sure with the Ironborn."
Cort gave a rare grin. "Good. I like fire and steel."
They fell quiet for a moment, the map between them.
"We're building something," Seren said at last. "Not just defenses. A realm. From stone, seed, and blood."
Arren nodded. "The land will feed the people. The walls will protect them. And the law... will make them stay."
The candle burned low, casting soft golden light across the field-desk inside Seren's room. The night outside was filled with distant hammering, the murmur of voices, and the creak of wagons being drawn into the supply yard. But here, inside, it was still. He moved the reports aside and reached for the sealed parchments, his fingers stained faintly with ink and ash. He had come to dread the letters, each one a reminder that the realm never slept.
The first was from Jon, and it was brief, written in the same hand he remembered from the first summons years ago. "Send obsidian to the Wall. All we have. As much as we can get. Urgent." Nothing more. No explanation. But it chilled him all the same. Jon did not use words like "urgent" lightly. Seren leaned back in his chair, staring at the flap of the tent. Obsidian. They had unearthed caches of it by chance in the stony hills west of Greywater, and begun carving it into arrowheads and spearpoints almost as a curiosity. Now, it seemed, the old names held true, dragonglass, and something more. He would divert half the carts meant for White Harbor as jewellers before sunrise.
The second letter was written on thicker parchment, crested with a merman holding a trident. Lord Wyman Manderly's seal, pressed deep and scented faintly with rosewater and sea salt. Seren already knew what it would say. "Two hundred armsmen, in exchange for rice—four hundred barrels." A fair trade. More than fair. Manderly was playing his part well, building up his coffers with trade while feeding his people. White Harbor's tenements were fuller than ever, but fewer children went hungry now. Rice paddies and flat-bottomed boats had changed that. Still, Seren had no illusions: loyalty flowed more surely with food than with banners.
The third was from Maester Luwin, sober and exact, as always. "Robb has recovered from the his small fever. Rickon's sleep is still troubled, he wakes talking of wolves and snow. Along the King's Road, more disappearances. One burned wagon. No survivors." Seren closed his eyes for a moment. The boy's dreams unnerved him. He had seen too much in the past five years to dismiss such things out of hand. And the King's Road, if trade faltered, the rest would follow. Banditry? Or worse? They would need more outriders, more watchposts. Maybe even ravens stationed along the road.
He opened his own ledger and began to write, the quill moving steadily through the candlelight. A short summary for Jon, though it grew with every line. Obsidian shipments diverted. Manderly's deal accepted. New roads progressing, forges strained. Census near complete: one hundred ninety-eight thousand souls under their protection, north of the Neck. New charcoal kilns needed. Food reserves were ahead of schedule, but only just. "Your people believe in you," he wrote near the end, more personal than he intended. "And they follow me because I wear your colors."
Seren folded the parchment, sealed it with his mark, a hammer set beneath a weirwood tree, and set it aside. The wind shifted through the canvas walls, and the scent of the marsh drifted in: water, earth, and fire. So much had changed. So much still could.
-END-
Chapter 10 — Ashes in the Snow
The scream of the steward still echoes through the hall.
Dylen, what used to be Dylen, is already on his feet, staggering with jerking, unnatural movement, limbs twitching like a marionette cut loose from its strings. His eyes glow like twin shards of ice. There's no soul behind them. No pain. No mercy. Only hunger.
The room erupts into chaos.
Benches overturn. Men scramble back, shouting over one another. The air grows colder with every breath, each exhale turns to mist. Frost flowers bloom on the flagstones. Ghost lets out a savage growl, his white fur bristling, hackles high.
I don't hesitate.
My sword is already in my hand, drawn in one clean motion. I plant myself between the wight and the others. "Clear the hall!" I shout. "Get them out—"
The thing lunges.
I meet it head-on, slashing low at its knees. The steel bites deep into bone, severs muscle, but Dylen doesn't scream. Doesn't fall. The momentum alone should've dropped him, but he just keeps coming, dragging the leg behind him like it weighs nothing.
The sword does nothing.
Ghost hurls himself at the wight again, jaws snapping. Teeth sink into the dead man's forearm and yank. Bone cracks, but the wight doesn't falter. Its other hand claws at me, nails like shards of frozen glass. I stagger back, parry high, swing low. The arm hangs by a single tendon. Still, it strikes.
"Burn it!" I roar. "Fire—get fire!"
But the hearth's too far, and the coals scattered. The brands are half-burnt or out. The cold's creeping too fast, one breath, two, and my fingers are already stiff. I see my own breath in clouds, and for a mad instant, it reminds me of dragon smoke. Would that I had fire.
A flash of movement, Lord Commander Mormont storms through the room, armor half-buckled, white hair wild around his shoulders. "Stand fast!" he bellows. "Hold the line, drive it back!"
But even he pauses when he sees its eyes.
For one heartbeat, he just stares. And I know the thought in his head is the same in mine: This should not be.
Then his voice returns. "Flames! Oil! Anything that burns!"
A steward, a lad named Tolland, slips on the stones and drops the torch he carried. It skitters across the floor, sputters, nearly dies.
The wight's head turns toward him with eerie precision.
It moves faster than any corpse should. One stride, then two, then it's on the boy. On its way there a Black Brother takes one of its arms with his sword and another punches a knife into its back. But the thing just doesn't stop.
Tolland screams as it bites his throat. I'm moving before I think, shoulder slamming into the wight's flank, my sword hacking into its back. I hear ribs shatter. Still, it turns toward me.
Then Ghost barrels into it again, and this time, the wight's off-balance. It crashes into the overturned bench, tangled in splinters.
"Jon!" Mormont shouts, tossing something through the air.
A heavy clay lantern, pine oil.
I catch it. Just barely.
Without thinking, I smash it across the wight's chest. The oil splashes out in great, sticky arcs.
A spark from the torch.
Then flame.
The thing shrieks in defiance. In rage. It thrashes, ignited, the blue fire turning gold and red. The cold begins to lift, slowly, as the stench of burning flesh fills the air.
By the time it stops moving, there's little left but scorched bone and blackened cloth.
Silence returns to the hall. Heavy. Dreadful.
The smell lingers.
Mormont breathes heavily beside me. "That..." He just couldn't find the words.
I glanced at Tolland in the ground, his throat open, he was already dead.
The smell of burnt flesh still clings to the air, acrid and foul, but there's no time to gag. Before the fire even gutters, the door bursts open behind us, four more brothers storm into the hall, weapons drawn, responding to the screams.
And then the unexpected happens, poor Tolland, no more than ten and seven years old opens his eyes, a cold blue in them.
I thought that they couldn't raise more south of the wall... fuck!
"Another one!" someone shouts.
"Hold!" Mormont bellows, but panic wins.
Three men rush it. One, a veteran called Torm, swings with a heavy axe, sharp and well-forged. The blade crunches into the wight's shoulder and drives deep into the collarbone. Any man would fall screaming. But Tolland doesn't scream. He doesn't even slow.
His other hand flashes out, inhumanly fast. It grabs Torm by the face and tears.
Blood sprays like mist. Torm's scream is short, wet, and then he's on the ground, twitching, the right side of his face a ruin of torn flesh.
I move again, faster than thought, driven by something deeper than instinct. My longsword slashes downward, taking off the wight's arm at the elbow.
It doesn't stop.
The severed arm keeps moving, fingers clawing along the stone floor like a spider made of ice and rage. One of the younger recruits recoils, screaming, stomping on it with his boot. The hand claws through the leather.
"Fall back!" I shout. "It's going for the Old Bear—!"
And it is. That dead, frostbitten face turns toward Lord Commander Mormont, the thing that used to be Hareth, shambling straight for him, ignoring everyone else. The glow in its eyes flares brighter, fueled by something older than hate.
Mormont stands his ground, jaw clenched, short sword held steady. But he's not fast. Not anymore. He won't survive if it reaches him.
There's no time.
I seize a lamp from the wall, a thick, brass-bellied thing full of whale oil, heavy in my hand. My fingers are trembling, frost-stung and still raw from before, but they obey. I rip the stopper off with my teeth.
"Get clear!" I scream.
I don't wait to see if they do.
I hurl the lamp straight into the creature's chest.
The oil soaks it, dark, viscous, sticky. The impact drives the wight back a step. I grab the torch one of the brothers holds, push past him, and slam the fire straight into the spreading oil.
The world explodes in orange.
The wight ignites in a roar of flame.
It doesn't flinch. It screams. The sound is worse than pain. It's rage, a howl that echoes in bone, that curdles the air. It flails violently, striking walls, knocking over tables, trailing fire. The room fills with choking smoke.
"Back! Back, damn you!" Mormont yells, shielding his face from the heat. Men pull away, shielding their eyes. Someone is praying, loud and fast. Another is sobbing.
The burning thing slams into a pillar and collapses, still screaming.
It takes too long to die.
When it finally stops moving, it's little more than blackened bone and wet ash, a shape smoldering on the stones. The air is still cold, but the chill has receded. Slowly. Reluctantly.
Silence descends. Except for the crackle of fire and the moan of wind beyond the walls.
I stand in the center of it all, bruised, panting, hands scorched where the fire licked me. My forearms are red, the skin raw, but the pain feels distant. Familiar. Controlled.
Fire has never hurt me quite the way it should.
As a child, I used to play too close to the hearth in Winterfell. My hand would hover too near the flames. Maester Luwin once said I lacked fear of heat. But even now, with oil-burns turning my fingers red and raw, I know this: the fire hurt less than it should. I should be in the ground screaming; this won't even leave a scar.
I clench my hand. The pain comes. Belated. Manageable.
I remember the visions in the weirwood grove. The shadow of wings… the hiss of burning blood… a scream, and a dragon hatching in the snow.
Mormont speaks beside me, his voice hoarse. "Jon. That was… what in the Seven Hells was that?"
I look at the corpse, if it still counts as one.
"The dead," I murmur, "don't stay dead anymore."
The others stare at the charred remains in silence. One man kneels. Another mutters a prayer to the Father. Samwell stands near the edge of the group, eyes wide, hands shaking. Maester Aemon is in the other side of the room locking at me with sightless eyes that can see too much.
The weight of what just happened settles over them like snowfall.
… this was only the beginning.
The stench of burned flesh hung in the air long after the flames died. Smoke coiled up through the rafters of the hall like a serpent seeking escape, but there was no wind tonight, no cleansing chill. Just the acrid memory of what had happened.
I stood over the blackened bones. My sword was still in my hand, but it felt heavier now. The grip slick with sweat, knuckles white. Ghost pressed against my thigh, silent and tense, his red eyes never leaving the scorch mark on the stone.
The corpse, or what had been one, was gone now, reduced to ash and fragments. But it didn't feel gone. Not really. A piece of it still clung to us. To me.
Across the room, Bowen Marsh stood over the severed arm. The damn thing was still twitching. Fingers curling and uncurling as if clawing through some nightmare. When Marsh dropped it into the brazier, it bucked once, reflex or rage, I didn't know, and then cracked apart in the fire with a sound like wet wood bursting.
No one spoke. No one could.
I heard the whispers anyway.
"It wouldn't die…"
"What in the Seven Hells was that?"
"Blue eyes. I swear, they glowed—glowed."
"Stark burned it. Fire did it. Only fire..."
I said nothing. I didn't look at them.
I stared down at my hands instead, slight burns, blistered where I'd gripped the lamp too long. Maester Aemon had wrapped them, but they still ached, dull and hot. Yet even through the pain, I remembered how slow it had been to come. Like fire, reluctant to burn me.
I saw Sam leaning against the wall by the stairs, his face pale and soaked with sweat. His hands shook. He was clutching a leather-bound book like a shield. Like he didn't know what else to hold on to.
I crossed to him.
"You all right?" I asked.
He flinched. "I… I think so."
But I could see the lie in his eyes. He wasn't all right. None of us were.
"That thing," he whispered. "It wasn't natural."
"No," I said. "It wasn't."
Sam didn't reply. His mouth opened once, then closed. He just stared at the ashes.
I felt Ghost lean against me, fur bristling. The flames might've lit up again, but the air hadn't warmed up. If anything, it was colder now.
Gods, it's one thing seeing it on a screen… what would thousands of them do to an army?
They summoned me late. After the hall was emptied and the bones scattered to ash. After the whispers gave way to silence again, and only the wind moved outside the Wall.
Lord Commander Mormont stood beside the hearth in his solar, firelight dancing across the dark wool of his cloak. He didn't look at me when I entered.
"Close the door, Stark," he said. "Sit."
I sat. The silence stretched out long and taut, like a drawn bowstring.
Then he said, without turning, "You saved my life."
I blinked. I didn't expect thanks. Least of all from him.
"I didn't have time to think," I said. "Just acted."
"You acted right," he said, and finally turned. His eyes were rimmed red, from smoke, from weariness, from too many winters and not enough hope, this man had seen the watch go to the dogs for decades. "You saw what none of us were ready to see. And you moved."
"I got lucky."
"No," he said. "You knew."
His gaze bored into me.
"You have fire in you, Stark. I've known boys break at the first arrow. You faced a walking corpse and burned it down. That's more than instinct... I won't ask, you have earned that much from me, but tell me what this is."
"Corn!"
I looked down at my bandaged hand.
"I've… heard of things like that before. In old books. Tales of the Long Night. The Others."
Mormont let out a grunt. "Stories. Ghost tales."
"Not anymore," I said. "That thing wasn't a man. It wasn't even a beast. It didn't feel pain. Didn't bleed. Didn't stop."
Mormont stared into the fire for a moment. "So we burn our dead now."
I nodded. "Everyone brought from north of the Wall. If they fall, you burn them. Immediately." The Others weren't supposed to be able to raise the dead on this side. But we clearly saw that. Was it because he was killed by a wight? Some kind of zombie method? "And everyone that falls on this side, too. They can clearly bypass the wall..."
The Lord Commander gave a slow nod. "I'll send word to Eastwatch and the Shadow Tower. No more burials. Only ashes. I will call back Benjen, I need him here more than out there."
Uncle Benjen had left a few days after I had arrived, we didn't talk much. I think when he saw me, he saw his sister, and that killed him a little bit inside.
I wasn't finished.
"That won't be enough," I said. "We need proof. And this shows the necessity of the reforms; if the enemy is coming, the Wall must be protected. I will do what I can south."
"Yes, I will start immediately." He raised an eyebrow. "What sort of proof?"
I met his gaze.
"You have to capture one."
If it would even work, in the books the severed hand of the wight just decomposed and stopped moving when it was brought to Kings Landing, the Others were smart enough to know that humanity didn't belive in them anymore and to keep it that way.
His expression darkened.
"Have you gone mad?"
"No one will believe us, Lord Commander. Not the South. Not even the rest of the Watch. They'll say we've drunk too much whiskey. Seen shadows in the wind."
"So we bring a monster to their doorstep?"
"We bring truth," I said. "If the Wall really stands to guard the realms of men, then men need to know what we guard against."
"...We will do what we can."
Hopefully, they will be able to capture a live one, and find a way to keep it alive. Mormont didn't speak for a long time. He grabbed his sword and it looked like he was thinking of giving it to me, but in the end he didn't say anything.
Good, as much as I want Valyrian steel in my hands, it is needed here more.
Then he turned away, poured two cups of whiskey, and handed me one.
He raised his to the fire and muttered, "To truth, then. And to fire."
We drank.
It was bitter and cold. Like blood in snow.
The rookery was quiet in the hours before dawn. Snow whispered against the stone, and the wind clawed at the windows like an old, hungry thing. The ravens had gone still—perhaps out of respect. Or perhaps they simply knew.
I found him hunched beside the brazier, hands outstretched toward a flame that gave more light than heat. The fire painted his skin in soft gold, but it did nothing to drive the cold from his bones.
"You always come when the wind is worst," Aemon rasped without turning. "Or when your thoughts are loud."
I didn't answer at first. I just sat beside him on the worn bench, letting the silence sit between us like an old friend neither of us trusted fully. The fire crackled. Somewhere far below, a horn called a single, distant note.
"I'm leaving," I said at last.
"I know," he murmured. "Your step has grown sharp. Restless. You walk like a man whose path is pulling him forward faster than his heart can follow."
I looked at him. The pale cloud of his eyes, the tremble in his fingers. The deep, brittle weariness of a man who had outlived not only his kin but the purpose he once swore to.
"You don't have to die here," I said quietly. "You're Aemon Targaryen. I have land, ships. Men. Gold. A place for you, at Moat Cailin, at Winterfell, wherever you want. Let me take you away from this place."
A shadow of a smile touched his lips. "My place is here. Among crows and ghosts and old stones, Daemon."
"You deserve more than this frozen tomb."
"So do you," he said, turning his face toward me, "but that hasn't stopped you, has it? You have felt it too child, the magic of this place, it feeds us…"
I wanted to argue. To plead. But I could see it, feel it, in the way his shoulders sagged and his breath fluttered against the cold. He was already half a memory. The Wall was the last thing tethering him to this world. If he left it, the fire in him would go out.
"I won't let them forget you," I said.
"They already have," Aemon replied, gently. "That's the way of things. But if you remember me... that is enough."
He reached out then, blind fingers fumbling until they found my wrist.
"You have the blood of the dragon and the heart of the wolf. You were always meant to walk the knife's edge between ice and fire. Be careful, child. One will always want to devour the other."
I stared at the fire.
"My grandfather killed my other grandfather."
Aemon said nothing.
"My father, Rhaegar, his choices sparked a war that broke the realm. Thousands died for it. My grandfather was a madman who deserved death. I… I don't think much of my own ancestors. What kind of a man does that make me?"
I turned to him. "You're the only one I can ask. You're a Targaryen. Do you feel it too? That… tangle inside. That sense that your ancestors are always watching, urging you toward fire, toward glory… toward madness?"
Aemon folded his hands slowly, thoughtfully.
"I know that tangle well," he said. "My brothers bathed in fire. My cousins sang of dragons and danced through blood. I chose to lay down the crown before it could choose me. But the fire never leaves us, Daemon—"
He said the name softly.
"—What matters is how we contain it." He said slowly. Looking at my soul. "You are not the sum of your father's crimes. It doesn't matter what you think of them. You must choose, every day, to be better than they were. That is the weight of our blood. Not power. Not prophecy. Choice. They will call you a bastard, they will call you rapespawn. It does not matter, what matters is that you know who you are."
I held his hand a little longer than I should have. And then embraced him. This might be the last time I see him. I may not agree with all that he thought or said, but Aemon Targaryen was undeniably a wise man, and it was a shame that he had to rot here.
Then I rose.
"When the ravens bring word, it'll be from me."
"I'll wait for your wings, nephew." he said, and then turned back to the fire. His fingers opened slightly, as if reaching for something only he could see.
I left him there, as the snow fell harder, and the Wall groaned under the weight of eternal winter.
A sennight had passed since fire took the dead man, and Castle Black no longer felt like a half-buried ruin clinging to survival.
It breathed again.
The scent of fresh-cut pine and tarred beams still lingered in the air, stronger than the stink of sweat or the soot of the kitchens. The crooked, half-collapsed buildings that once littered the courtyard were gone, torn down and burned or rebuilt with new timber, cut in the foothills below the Wall and dragged up by sleds and horse teams from the Gift. The yard itself had been leveled and packed hard with gravel, stone, and concrete, bordered now by a waist-high stone wall laid by Old Stonesmen from Karhold who had come north with the last supply trains.
The great hall had changed most of all. It had a proper roof now, sloped steep and sharp to shed snow and ice, tiled with black slate. Two chimneys puffed faint trails of smoke into the air, one from the hearth inside the hall and one from the new kitchens that had been built adjoining the mess.
The old cracked timbers had been replaced by stout beams of heartwood, dark and red, polished and sealed against the cold. Above the entrance, someone, likely Pyp or Toad, had carved a rough image of a direwolf's head into the lintel, its eyes fierce, its snout turned toward the gate.
The lift was finally finished.
The old cage, held together with rust and frozen rope, had been discarded. In its place stood a reinforced platform of ironwood planks bolted to a heavy oak frame. It moved with a system of pulleys, gear winches, and iron weights, sturdy enough to carry forty men at once, and faster than the old winch by half.
The counterweight system allowed just one man or a mule to move me mechanism. Sam had overseen its final construction phase, watching it rise now, smooth, deliberate, like a ship's sail hoisting skyward, made me feel something close to pride.
The armory had been doubled in size. No longer a damp lean-to full of rusted blades and bent mail, it had been cleaned out, re-roofed, and fitted with racks of spears, swords, shields, bows, and quivers of fresh-fletched arrows, all steel. It had blacksmiths now who worked in shifts, mending links and shaping steel. A row of new mail hauberks gleamed like dull water in the firelight when the forge's door opened.
Inside the new storerooms, cool, dry, and roofed with sod, were kept barrels of salt pork, dried fish, beans, oats, hard bread, pickled onions, and even small casks of spiced wine. The place was warmer now, and the black brother wouldn't freeze at night. The watch couldn't stop singing my praises.
The castle felt a bit empty now that the laborers were leaving slowly, it could hold many times more men than it had, but with time and the reforms the Lord Commander had started implementing it would start growing.
By the time the wilding horde came, the castle might hold three times as many men as it did now. And the war to come south would see many men being sent here. I would love to see the wildings meeting the new steel doors of the wall, the scorpions and towers on top of the wall, the steel-tipped arrows and crossbow bolts, and twenty-five hundred men manning the castle.
At least if Mance Rayder decides to attack and not heed my word of diplomacy.
Reports from the Shadow Tower were promising, if slow. Ser Denys Mallister had sent word that they'd repaired the south-facing walls and roofed over the old rookery. They'd uncovered a ruined forge buried under ice near the outer yard, usable, with time. More importantly, settlers from nearby villages had begun drifting closer to the Gift again. A dozen families had accepted Mallister's offer of land and protection, building homes and small herds just beyond the old watchposts.
Eastwatch was in worse shape, weather-wracked, sea-scoured, but Cotter Pyke had written that the docks had been reinforced with stone and tarred pine. Fishing boats now made regular trips down the coast toward Last Hearth and Skagos, trading salt fish and crab for lumber and sheep. The outer curtain wall had partially collapsed during the last storm, but Pyke had drafted the smugglers in his garrison into helping with reconstruction—"They're used to working in the dark," he'd written, "and they know how to hold a line, if you give them a whip."
Some of the men I'd brought north with the caravan had chosen not to return. They'd listened closely when Lord Commander Mormont made his offer, land in the Gift, a cottage and a share of the fields for those willing to help rebuild the Watch's holdings. Not all were sellswords or vagabonds; a few were farmers' sons with nothing left to return to, men weary of war and ready for soil and stone over sword and shield.
Now they were raising fences along the tree line and helping restore the holdfasts east of Queenscrown. Encouraged by their choice, Mormont had begun drafting letters, some bound for White Harbor, others for Barrowton and even Torrhen's Square, offering opportunity to any man with strong arms and honest hunger.
He meant to repopulate the Gift not just with brothers, but with free men. It was a vision both bold and fragile, and for the first time in a century, the land around Castle Black had begun to breathe again.
The drills were done for the morning. Most of the brothers were dragging their aching limbs to the kitchens or limping off to sharpen blades dulled by the frozen ground. I sat on a stacked barrel near the edge of the yard, watching them go.
Sam was still standing there. Alone.
Sweat soaked through the back of his tunic, dark against the grey wool. His helm was too large for him, slightly tilted to one side. He held a wooden practice sword like it might bite him at any moment, blade dipped, stance crooked.
The training yard was quiet in the afternoon light. Most of the men had gone to the hall for stew and black bread, but Sam was still there, red-faced and panting, fumbling with a wooden sword far too heavy for him. He'd barely managed to lift it, let alone swing it, and now he stood hunched over in the cold, sweat steaming off his brow.
I crossed the yard slowly, Ghost padding at my side.
"Your stance has improved," I said, just loud enough for him to hear. "You didn't trip over your own feet this time."
Sam gave me a weak smile and slumped onto a bench with a groan. "That's only because Grenn stood behind me and shoved me forward."
I sat beside him, unstrapping my gloves. "You've had worse days."
"I've had nothing but worse days," he muttered. "I still can't swing the damned thing without wanting to vomit. I'm not a fighter, Jon."
"No," I said. "You're not. And thank the gods for that."
He blinked at me. "What?"
I turned to face him fully, elbows on my knees. "Sam. You've done more in the last few weeks than half the Watch has in the last five years. Those builders would still be arguing over rafters if you hadn't sorted the supply ledgers. The Eastwatch grain shipments were mislabeled until you rewrote the inventory. The lift's counterweights? Your idea. You saved us weeks."
Sam fidgeted, looking down at his boots. "I just… it's what I know. Books. Numbers. Writing things down."
"And it matters," I said. "It's mattered more than blades or brute strength. You accelerated the entire thing by weeks. Maybe months."
He looked up at me slowly, eyes uncertain.
"You're wasted here," I said. "On the Wall. In the Watch."
He swallowed hard. "That's not a small thing to say."
"I know it isn't. And I've thought long about it."
The words came more easily now. I'd rehearsed them in my mind a dozen times over the last two days. "I want you to come south with me, Sam, to Moat Cailin. I'll need men I trust, men with sharp minds who know how to plan and build. I've got land, walls to finish, and people to feed. I have many plans I want to implement, and I need men like you to do it."
"You want me to… what? Leave the Watch? Serve you?"
"Yes," I said plainly. "As my steward. My advisor. My friend."
He stared at me, stunned. "But I—the vows. Even if I haven't said them yet, I'm bound by them in spirit. And Lord Mormont—"
"I've already spoken to Mormont," I said. "He understands. You've done your part for the Watch, and more. The vows are sacred, but you have yet to say them. You were never meant to die in black. You were meant to do something."
Sam hesitated. "And my father…?"
I gave him a hard look. "Your father sent you here to break you. He'll never see what I see. But I do. I see the man who kept this place from freezing to death. Who solved five dozen problems with ink and logic by my side. I don't care what Randyll fucking Tarly thinks. He wasted his best man by sending him here; he could have had the greatest future Lord Tarly by his side, and he squandered it. I care what you decide to become."
He looked away, face twisting. "I don't know if I'm brave enough."
"You're more than brave, Sam. Bravery isn't always in the blade. Sometimes it's in staying when you want to run. Sometimes it's in choosing the path no one else dares. You've already done that."
The wind whistled through the yard. A raven cawed overhead. Sam sat silent for a long moment, then finally nodded.
"I'll go," he whispered. "If you'll have me."
And now I have my Seren number two.
I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding and clapped a hand on his shoulder.
"Then we leave at first light. Pack light," I said. "We ride soon."
"err— Yes!, I don't have many things anyway..." He ran off to collect his things, tripping all the way.
That man is hopeless...
For the first time in days, I felt a weight lift.
Not all battles would be won with swords.
Some would be won with books.
Some with friends.
And some with both.
-END-